Quiet

Yeah, I know, I sometimes get quiet in the summer. There are a couple reasons for that.

First of all, it's hot. It's actually been a bit hotter this summer than some recent summers. And the heat kind of saps my energy - when I come home I just want to do my self-mandated hour of piano practice and then read until it's time for bed.

And second, the summer classes take a lot of my energy. But in a good way. The students are a lot better and more involved (by and large) than they are in the regular semester (especially the Gen Bio non-majors students), and they ask a lot of tough questions and kind of require me to stay on my toes a little more. And it takes a little more energy teaching. But as I said, in a good way. I'd rather have students who ask questions and challenge me and want to know more about stuff and want to know the "why" of stuff instead of people who sit there like passive receivers.

I don't really have any "foolish student stories" either for the summer - aside from that one lazy instance of people thinking they could get away with plagiarized reports (and two of the three came and apologized to me for it later), I don't really have a lot of problems. Which is good. (knocking wood right now, thinking of last summer's debacle with the guy who wanted to claim that he deserved a better grade because "other people" cheated).

So I go in every morning and kind of pour myself out, then go home in the evenings and try to renew for the next day. It's good, just very tiring.